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2. We focus on what is not important, and essentially that all history we are taught is war. Fighting is glorified, battles are looked at as "games" winners, losers and strategies. Nation against nation, people against people. Over and over and over.
3. That inventions that would have benefited humanity have been destroyed/covered up.
Just yesterday I read that the most famous guitar riff in history-Smoke on the water- is basically Beethovens 5th Symphony backwords. Ritchie Blackmore has said he would owe Beethoven a lot of money. That counts as history I think.
The most surprising fact about history ?? Even if one has proof that it actually happened does not always mean everyone will believe it. A few years ago on another website for example someone had posted that Richmond, Virginia's then WXEX channel 8 back in the 80's had a news chopper. Within no time somebody who worked at WXEX claimed that the station "never had any god-DAMN chopper" and that people shouldn't be telling such false stories. Later a few other posters put links up showing that WXEX DID have a chopper. One clip showed some people shopping and eating in downtown Richmond pointing to the sky saying "..HEY LOOK IT'S TV 8 !!" and there it was..a shot of TV8's chopper called "TV 8 Eye in the SKY". Another promo showed the then WXEX anchors of Rick Young and Barbara Berlin standing beside the chopper. Did the guy from WXEX took back what he had first said ?? NO !! He claimed that the promos and ads about the chopper were photo shopped. oh well !!
When studying for the AP U.S. History exam in high school, I realized that most people don't know that the U.S. only practiced open-door immigration AFTER 1965. During the "glory years" (post WWII boom) when America's working class achieved an incredible level of prosperity, we severely restricted immigration to only certain western European nations that had been proven to provide only incredibly hard-working, intelligent workers who wouldn't sign up for public assistance unless they were literally starving.
This strict immigration system resulted in a balance of power between "labor" and "capital" (or the working class and the wealthy business owner class), where employers had to provide decent working conditions and good pay in order to get and keep workers. Gains due to productivity were equally shared between the two groups. Life was great.
Don't want to turn this into a great debates forum; however, I think that is a very selective reading of history:
1. No open-door immigration before 1965? Wrong. During the 1800's and even the early 1900's we certainly did have a laissez fair immigration policy. And even at Ellis Island, where immigrants (1890's to 1920) were subjected to certain physical and mental health screenings, the rejection rate was only 2.0%.
2. The "Great Convergence" in income equality (1940 to 1970) was not driven by immigration restrictions. Institutional factors played a big role: Union density, union power, wage controls during WWII, higher real minimum wage, more progressive tax/transfer policies and to some degree the GI Bill and expansion of universal education.
3. The increase in income equality from the late 70's to 2016 has been caused by an array of factors including changing technology, decline in unions, tax and transfer policies, etc. Immigration has played a part but certainly not a starring role in rising income equality.
Ho Chi Minh - Was once an ally of the United States. They petitioned for freedom after WWI but were ignored. They were armed to fight the Japanese in WWII, but were again shut out from their own independence. Finally Ho Chi Minh turned to those that would see Vietnam free of colonialism....the Communists.
Hopefully we learn not to support repressive governments.
Except maybe the Shah of Iran....who we then armed Saddam Hussein to keep in check.
Or let's not forget Afghanistan....where we armed a guy named Osama Bin Laden to fight the Soviets.
How about the Sandanistas and the drug trade? I mean, the opium wars in China kept them slumped for a long time. Why would we turn illicit drug use on ourselves?
We haven't learned that nobody wants a colonial power, even a benevolent one, to run foreign affairs. I believe it was Jefferson that warned about the intrigues of Europe, perhaps the costs of standing armies.
Oh well. Maybe we'll figure out someday how much dividends we could have by having the 10x stronger education system than everyone else. Or 10x more efficient transportation system. Or simply being the home of the free and the brave, where we have 10x more freedom...maybe that's what got this whole party started to begin with.
Until then, we have 10x military strength. England used to have it. France had it. Rome had it...even Macedonia briefly....before they head back to the Middle Eastern Empires. The all had big, expensive, hard to modernize militaries.
Conversely, I always found it odd how old and beautiful Prague is, given the number of wars historically fought. One person told me, that's easy, we always surrender and fly a new flag...and continue on.
Not sure that's the right way either...but maybe there's some low hanging fruit...some really bad mistakes that seem to keep coming from the same group...that we could cut back on a bit.
It's as if most ancient peoples have based their civilizations around water - the sea, rivers, lakes. And that things like floods, hurricanes, tsunamis and deluges happen almost everywhere that peoples have lived.
Oh, wait. That is where most ancient peoples lives, and those phenomena do happen where most peoples live.
It's not interesting that ancient people lived near water ... it's obvious & defies the need for explanation (unless you are in elementary school).
And floods, hurricanes, tsunamis & deluges are not really phenomena; they are ... weather.
If every ancient civilization (pre-trade routes) were to simply maintain oral historical accounts of "Great FLOODS" ; that wouldn't be very interesting either. Maybe in an "Almanac" sense if anything.
But it's been estimated that there may be as many as 500 legends of The Great Flood. It's understandable for island peoples to maybe have the perception of "the whole world being underwater" but many of the myths come from areas with geographical features that would make this assumption improbable; Italy, Greece, the Alaskan Inuit, Kolusches & Tlingit & the Papago Indians from Arizona...
What IS interesting to me was the universal presence of the account of "THE Great Flood" which included the element of a "warning" that caused for boats to be built, species to be pre-selected, the use of birds to determine if waters had receeded & water levels that did not receed in days or even weeks but months.
The information that we don't have & likely won't anytime soon; is what would make it even more amazing: The anthropological & geological evidence that could pinpoint if the Great Flood actually occured, in the locations where the myths originated from & at the same time.
In 2012, Robert Ballard, the archaeologist who's high tech team found the remains of the Titanic in 1985; found evidence 400ft below the surface of the Black Sea of an ancient shoreline. Using carbon-dating they were able to establish that a catastrophic event, involving a flood of epic proportions may indeed have taken place around 5,000 BC.
Marie Antoinette never said “Let them eat cake.”
When told that starving French peasants lacked any bread to eat, the queen is alleged to have callously declared, “Let them eat cake!” There is no evidence, however, that Marie Antoinette ever uttered that famous quip. The phrase used to encapsulate the out-of-touch and indifferent royals first appeared years before Marie Antoinette ever arrived in France in philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s description of Marie-Therese, the Spanish princess who married King Louis XIV in 1660. The remark was also ascribed to two aunts of Louis XVI before it was apocryphally tied to Marie Antoinette.
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